It's simple supply and demand: More people are looking to rent apartments than are buying homes and moving out of them. The result: Rising rents, fewer concessions, and more competition for good apartments. If you're in the rental market -- and more than a third of Americans are -- what can you do?

Despite new federal laws designed to protect them, many tenants are still finding themselves caught up in foreclosure dramas as building owners struggle to hold on to their properties. And if real estate market doesn't improve soon, the problem could get worse.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car plans to buy 500 electric cars from Nissan Motor Co (NSANY) as part of a strategy to make the vehicles more widely available to renters.
Enterprise, which owns the brands Enterprise, Alamo and National, will include the Leaf vehicle in its rental fleets in eight cities: Seattle, Portland, Ore, Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, Ariz, Nashville and Knoxville, Tenn. They will begin buying the cars in January, The Wall Street Journal reported.